Simple Tests

Author Comments

This is my entry for the 2011 Tournament of Flash Animators (TOFA) 3rd Round. We had 4 weeks to animate to the theme "Divide by Zero". While dividing by zero is literally in this animation, the way I interpreted the theme was how everyone reacted when I told them what it was. The conversation, every time I had it, went like this:

There you go! But more literally, I did research as to how this theme could be interpreted. Sure, there is the Internet Meme way where the world implodes or something, but I vowed that I would never do an internet meme (well, unless its something to do with Slenderman, because he is scary and awesome! But definitely not any of the "funny" internet memes) solely due to the fact that I don't find them funny and everyone does them. I like being an original.

So the ways I found I could do this theme varied. One way was the fact that Mathematician's consider dividing by zero "an expression that has no meaning", which I thought of a few dramatic ideas for (like Totaled 2), but none of them took off the ground.

Then I took it literally, inventing this Math World (inspired by Donald Duck in Math Land.) and had this Division Beast attacking a town, then a small, sheepish character who represented Zero stood against it and the beast inevitably killed itself because you cant divide by Zero. It was like a Children's cartoon, no strong violence, a nice sounding Narrator explaining the whole thing, a moral about actions speaking louder than words and all that jazz. Problem was I couldn't figure out a way to write it and even if I did I think it would have been 10 minutes long.

Then finally I came to the fact that dividing by zero is literally impossible (go ahead, try it on a calculator, when I did it on my phone's calculator it says "Invalid Operation".). So instead of doing the theme "Divide by Zero" I broadened it to "Impossible".

So there you have it! I really liked this animation due to the fact that I made it more about the visual, character acting portion than the verbal jokes and story. I definitely have 2 scenes from this that I am going to put into my demo reel. I also found it extremely fun drawing Bill Gully (or "Son" as he's referred to by the Boss. However, to clear up confusion, he is not actually his son or blood related in any way. Boss refers to everyone younger than him that's male that way.) in his DXi Human Testing Jumpsuit. I've always wanted to do something involving campy old Sci-Fi movies (much like Don Bluth's Space Ace.) and his suit kind of reminded me of that.

Otherwise, hope you enjoy it. If your curious about the making of a scene, please visit my Website and watch "Evolution of a Scene" in the Animation section. There you will find a breakdown of how I did the "Lick your Elbow" scene.

Yeah I got you. I just picked feats MOST people couldn't accomplish. I think actually Mythbusters did one involving the interlaced phone books too, I cant remember if they were actually able to rip it apart using heavy machinery, but I figured if I just make it tests most people generally consider "impossible" then it'd get the point across lol.

As usually you prove your talent in character animation with expressive posing and facial animation. Great job with this one Dave. I've watched it so much I felt like I already reviewed it until I realized I never actually wrote anything. We'll have a nice battle if we both move on to the finals.